Photo: Steam
In an apparent attempt to avoid being banned by the Kremlin, computer games distribution platform Steam has removed 11 pages from its website with content considered illegal in Russia, the country’s media regulator Roskomnadzor said on Tuesday.
“Steam has met the requirements of the law and removed the prohibited information. … The platform removed more than 260 items containing illegal content in total,” Roskomnadzor said.
The Russian media regulator did not clarify what the items in question were, or whether Steam had removed them altogether or had simply made them inaccessible to Russian users.
Steam, owned by the American company Valve, is the largest cloud gaming platform in the world. Russians are the third-largest users of Steam, with an estimated 9.5 million active accounts in the country, according to World Population Review.
The platform has continued to operate in Russia and neighbouring Belarus after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, however, Russian users have faced payment issues due to the blocking of major international payment services soon after the invasion.
Steam users can transfer money to their in-platform wallets using third-party services, but remain unable to use Steam to buy goods that are unavailable in Russia, as many major gaming companies, including Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft and Sony, have withdrawn from the Russian market.
Some users have bypassed the restrictions by switching the location of their accounts, for example to Kazakhstan, where no such ban is in place, according to Russia’s Tinkoff Magazine, which focuses on finance and lifestyle.
It emerged on 8 October that three Steam community pages had been added to Russia’s register of prohibited material, though no explanation for their inclusion was given.
The platform remained accessible to Russian users, however, as a site’s listing on the register does not automatically lead to it being blocked. Instead, Roskomnadzor then writes to both the owner of the site and the company hosting it to demand the removal the prohibited items, according to state-affiliated business daily Vedomosti.
Roskomnadzor’s press service told Vedomosti on 10 October that there were no plans to block Steam in Russia and that the company had “for the most part” complied with its demands.
On 8 October, Roskomnadzor blocked access to Discord, a popular app for group meetings, coworking and remote study, which is also used by gamers, on the grounds it was used “for terrorist and extremist purposes, to recruit people and to sell drugs”.
